


Believe Me To Be

by merrymarinerrevengesong



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Fluff, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Reichenbach Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrymarinerrevengesong/pseuds/merrymarinerrevengesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apologies are profuse but useless. There’s nothing the doctors can do, not even hazard a guess at when, if ever, the memories will return. Sherlock Holmes circa Winter 2009, that’s who returns from Switzerland. Sherlock Holmes a whole year before he met John Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Believe Me To Be

The soft, clammy hands around Sherlock’s neck tighten and black patches explode at the edges of his vision. If he is honest with himself, he knew it would likely come to this come to this when he started his journey – the final move, the only one now open to him. Before he can think too deeply on it he acts. He pulls his nemesis close, digs his fingers into his flesh for purchase and leans back just a little further. It doesn’t take a lot; their position was precarious to begin with, and upsetting the delicate balance their lives hang in is shockingly easy. Moriarty makes an indistinct noise as they tip, but cannot catch enough breath to scream as they are pulled inexorably down. Sherlock has time to reflect before he hits the water, that several years ago, before he met John Watson, it would not have shocked him at all that he found throwing himself off the tallest dam in Switzerland easy.

\--

The days stretch out impossibly long and anonymous in the hospital waiting room. Mycroft’s influence, even outside his jurisdiction, ensures Sherlock receives the best care possible, but it is outside the gamut of even the British government to make a hospital waiting room anything but the antiseptic limbo it is. The two most important men in Sherlock’s life wait in silence then, on uncomfortable chairs, staring blankly at the wall in front of them. They take comfort in the knowledge that Moriarty is dead. A body has not been found, but the local police force is still trawling the Grand Dixence Dam and it’s only matter of time.

John spends long periods on the phone to people back home who know Sherlock and are worried for him. They are all anxious, yes, but none of them really believe he won’t wake up from the coma into which he’s fallen. Sherlock Holmes, singular by virtue of his strange talents of observation and deduction. None of them say it, but John can tell that they’re all thinking how much Sherlock has been changed by having the invalided army doctor in his life. He has given up drugs, and his consulting service is doing very well. John knows from the soothing noises they all make they believe fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to take him away now, not after everything. John can’t bring himself to agree with them. He’s not sure if it’s the shock of having seen the two men fall over the dam wall or how nauseatingly pale and shrunken Sherlock looks laid out under the pristine hospital sheets. Perhaps it’s just his medical training, but whatever the reason, John feels inexplicably distanced from the optimism of his friends back in England. The older Holmes brother never says anything, nor does his mask of polite efficiency really slip, but John can tell he feels the same gnawing dread.

\--

The paper-white face and tremor in the voice of the surgeon who informs John and Mycroft they cannot yet visit Sherlock is something of a comfort to them. Their indifference for her wellbeing is cruel, they both know it, but intimidated medical staff is some indication that Sherlock is himself rather than the empty shell they privately feared. The two men decide to wait at their hotel. There’s nothing they can do at the hospital for now, and they know Sherlock is safe.

It’s just after dawn when they hail a cab. The air feels unbearably cold and sweet in John’s nostrils. Like a second chance. He is light-headed with relief.

\--

No one notices at first. Sherlock demands details about how he came to be in a Swiss hospital and the staff supply all the information they can. He was working on a case, an important one, he fell off a dam wall while apprehending the perpetrator. Sherlock cannot remember the case, but what’s one case as compared to any other, anyway? Another puzzle will be along shortly and he will have forgotten this one. It’s the same every time. Mycroft notes that Sherlock fails to ask after Moriarty but isn’t immediately suspicious and, frankly, doesn’t want to encourage his little brother's obsession with the man. Particularly as no body has been found and the local authorities have all but given up the search.

When John is finally allowed to visit two days after Sherlock regains consciousness, only to receive a blank stare void of recognition, dread pools icily in his stomach.

“Sherlock?”

The other man continues to stare blankly at the stranger in his hospital room, pale eyes darting over him, taking in the most minute of details. Finally his eyes narrow and his lips part triumphantly and in that moment John is sure, totally certain, that his friend has returned to him, that the dread was misplaced, too hastily arrived at.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

John expels a breath of confused laughter, “Sorry, what?”

“Afghanistan or Iraq, where did you serve?” Sherlock clarifies impatiently. “It’s obviously been some years since your discharge, an honourable one I think, but there are certain signs of military service that are quite enduring.”

John studies Sherlock a moment longer before he is sure this isn’t a joke then turns and stumbles form the room to find a doctor. _This_ , he thinks steadying himself on wall while the dizziness passes, _is a bit not good_.

\--

The apologies are profuse but useless. There’s nothing the doctors can do, not even hazard a guess at when, if ever, the memories will return. Sherlock Holmes circa Winter 2009, that’s who returns from Switzerland. Sherlock Holmes a whole year before he met John Watson. On the plane, the army doctor tries to remember what he was doing in the Winter of 2009. Probably getting shot at in Afghanistan. Or wrist-deep inside someone who had been shot. He can’t remember. At least he isn’t the only one.

\--

The doctors advised that above all, Sherlock’s friends should remain close to him, because if there’s any hope of recovery from this kind of injury, it’s generally found in routine. The things that remain familiar after traumatic brain injury are bodily; noises, smells, movements, the incidental rituals of domesticity. But Sherlock doesn’t want to play a stock character in someone else’s unimaginatively scripted life, he doesn't want to become the man in the photos that are put in front of him. Sherlock hates that man in the photos. He looks just like him but for the unguarded look in his eyes and the looseness of his shoulders. When John, the strange man who is impertinent in his familiarity, takes him _home_ \- different to the one he remembers- and settles him down in a comfortable armchair with a cup of tea made just the way he likes it, Sherlock turns on him.

"Leave.” He says coldly.

John squares his shoulders unconsciously and pulls out the small photo album he was told to assemble before leaving Switzerland. It’s full of photos of the two of them together before the accident. Some of them are proper, awkward tourist shots taken by strangers, one or two are from Christmas or birthday gatherings but the majority of them are just quick shots from one or the other of their mobiles. He sits across from Sherlock in his usual chair and opens the album to a random page.

“Here,” he says, privately cursing the slight tremor in his voice, “Do you remember this? We had to go to Cornwall for a case and stayed on after we solved it, last summer it-”

“Doctor Watson, I asked you to _leave_.”

John’s throat is suddenly dry and he can’t find the words he’s fumbling for.

"I realise you feel you know me, John, and that you think you were close to me, but I don't have any friends, none at all because I don't want any. If we were close, and I have to be honest, I think you are mistaken about your significance to me, then I don’t want to remember.” He finally turns to look John in the eye, but John wishes he hadn’t because now this man can surely observe his flayed heart in his slack jaw and clenched fist.

“I just want to be left in peace. Please."

John retreats to his room for the night, hoping that the morning will bring opportunity to talk sense into his friend but Sherlock remains insistent.

\--

John, being the stoic, loyal man he is, accepts this despite the cost to himself, and moves out of Baker Street shortly after the conversation. He stays with Harry while he tries to find work as a Doctor. He assumes Sherlock won’t want his help at the consulting business anymore.

He lies awake at night for hours wondering what Sherlock’s doing, who he’s turning into. At times he’s dimly aware of a part of him that thinks he should fight for Sherlock, try to help him remember or forge their friendship anew but suddenly he can't find the energy for anything, it's like he's just returned from Afghanistan again except this time there's no chance meeting, not fortuitous, life saving encounter with a genius madman, and when the world around John Watson starts turning grey and monotonous and he finds himself drifting away from the people he used to care about, he absolutely can't be fucked to fight it.

\--

Mycroft watches both men unravel from afar and is so disgusted and, in his own way, so heartbroken, that he can't bring himself to save his little brother, not again, not if the life he'll lead is so completely empty and Mycroft can still see so vividly good man he was becoming. He finally confronts him after yet another overdose; Sherlock is slumped in an ally not far from Baker Street and after Mycroft has arranged to have him transported there and put to bed he settles into a chair next to his immaculately made bed.

"You were better with him.” He says almost nonchalantly, studying the handle of his umbrella.

Sherlock hears every word but chooses not to respond.

“I can't stand seeing you like this. I won't save you this time, Sherlock. If you want to kill yourself slowly with drugs then that's fine, I won't stop you." Mycroft rises and replaces the chair precisely where he found it and walks out of Sherlock’s life.

\--

Lestrade tries to help, even though he secretly shares Mycroft’s frustrations, but when Sherlock starts taking drugs even when he has a crime to work on, he finally has to stop letting him in on cases. He wishes he didn't, but his superior officers are adamant. Sherlock became a public figure during the Moriarty case and his personal life, including his drug addiction, is routinely picked over in the tabloids. There's no way the police force can justify working with him now that he's so publicly ruined and they don’t have the power to suppress the information.

When the cases stop coming Sherlock doesn't care. Even though he can't remember John, he’s consumed by an ineffable sense of something being not quite right in his life, as though he left the room only to return to find all his belongings present, but ever so slightly rearranged by an anonymous visitor. Baker Street is totally unfamiliar to him, even though it holds all of his furniture and clothing. There is a new piece here and there- an inky blue dressing gown when he used to have scarlet dressing gown. He wonders idly why he purchased a new one; did the gown one tear, was it lost? Perhaps the new gown was a gift? In his bedroom there hangs a picture of Poe that he can’t recall purchasing but is so entirely in keeping with his tastes and interests that he must have brought it. Where did he find it? What drew him to that grave, Victorian face? He tries to summon something up but all he finds are a series of disconnected, meaningless sensations.

Every now and then Sherlock finds something around the apartment that he doesn't remember, that is certainly not his, but that makes him ache; physically ache with longing. Like a worn, cream cable-knit jumper that smells faintly of… of what?

It’s on the tip of his tongue but he can’t place it. For days he obsesses over the object. He hangs in on a chair he’s dragged to the foot of the lounge he has draped himself on. He studies it, trying to deduce what he can about the owner of the jumper. Though his study yields a satisfyingly long list of attributes and characteristics, the scent remains infuriatingly unknowable. One day when he's searching desperately for a paper he's misplaced he finds a packet of cigarettes hidden behind a book on the topmost bookshelf. They're no even the brand he smokes, but as soon as he lights it up and takes a drag the taste and smell of the smoke is overwhelmingly familiar and he finds himself crying.

\--

He tells himself that these emotions are grit on the lens and that soon his world will settle around him again just as it was before this inconvenience. He continues with his life, which is now made up entirely of drugs and experiments since crime solving is barred to him. Sometimes he finds himself at St Bart’s and the mortuary assistant, Molly, is there, strangely comforting in her nervous silence. This woman he remembers, though he can only remember meeting her a handful of times before the accident, while she sometimes acts as though they are established acquaintances. Sherlock has become used to this kind of asymmetrical interaction with people. He'll often dine at a new restaurant only to have a waiter ask after his friend or wave away the bill as thanks for some trivial matter he can't remember assisting them with.One day at Bart’s, Molly nervously asks him if he'd like to join her for coffee downstairs. She words the request carefully, but Sherlock can't quite deduce why she should be so pedantic. He considers her for a moment before accepting. There's something comforting in the way Molly doesn't pressure him to remember her or act as though he owes her intimacy.

She heads down first, allowing him to finish his experiment. When he joins her he finds that she's already ordered. Her hands are wrapped tightly around her own cup, and there are two more sitting on the table in front of her. Sherlock slows when he sees the third and studies her. Most people would baulk under that gaze, but Molly endures it calmly, clamping down stubbornly on the urge to fidget. Sherlock settles himself opposite her and picks up his coffee.

"I think you'll find the other rather more to your taste."

Sherlock starts at the voice from behind him, he turns and finds himself looking up at John, the stranger who irks him with his suffocating familiarity.

"Morphine or cocaine?"

"Pardon?" Sherlock scoffs, suddenly uncomfortable.

John smiles patiently,"Which is it today, Sherlock, morphine or cocaine? Wait, don't tell me, the lack of fine-muscle co-ordination, shaking like a leaf, flushed, all clear indications of morphine use."

Sherlock snorts, "Should I be impressed?" he asks, his voice slipping high pitched with mockery.

"No, Sherlock, you should be clean.” John’s voice is strident with frustration; he’s had this conversation dozens of times before, all with a man Sherlock doesn’t know, the man in the photos that he hates so much. “You’re a wraith, do you even eat?” John demands as he settles next to Molly. He switches cups with Sherlock who regards him coolly and makes not the slightest noise in reply.

There’s a very long silence; what does one say to the most important person in one’s life if that person doesn’t know who you are? John’s tempted to talk about himself, his memories of Sherlock, but he senses this will just frustrate Sherlock more. Finally he offers the detective an out.

“Come on then, what have you deduced about me?”

Sherlock arches a single eyebrow at John, “I’m not a performing dog.” He says, voice clipped.

“You must have deduced something about me, you’ve been banging around that apartment for months and it was mine as long as it was yours.”

“I-“ Sherlock peers rather intensely at his coffee. “I have deduced you were important to me.”

John cannot think of an appropriate response to that so he leaves it alone for rest of the afternoon. The three of them pass the time it takes to finish cheap, shit coffee in idle chatter. Mostly John and Molly listen to Sherlock discuss his current experiment in obscene detail. He’s attempting to distinguish between different scents and their interaction with each other. He’s recently had to admit that his previous treatise on the matter failed to take into account that scents and perfumes often blended together when a detective encounters them, and distinguishing them might be useful. So, for example, wool wash, supermarket brand men’s deodorant, a modestly priced men’s cologne and the faintest hint of women’s perfume in combination will smell very different then each scent does separately. And a great deal can be learnt about a man if one can untangle each scent form the other.

As they leave, John asks Sherlock whether he’s happened across his favourite jumper. Sherlock lies convincingly.

\--

Six months after Switzerland John knocks on the familiar black door at Baker Street. Predictably it’s Mrs Hudson that answers. She is warm and welcoming and pleased to see him. He accepts her offer of tea gladly. He has come to apologise to Sherlock, but wants to delay the moment when his best friend looks at him like a stranger just a little longer.

When he gathers his courage and leaves Mrs Hudson it is to find Sherlock reclining on the couch, palms pressed together, eyes closed. The position is so familiar and bittersweet in its redolence of his time at Baker Street, that John hangs at the door for a moment and simply watches. He knows Sherlock has almost certainly heard him climb the stairs and must be aware that he is being watched, but for some reason the detective says nothing. When he finally does speak, he is so still John is sure he imagines it.

“No sugar and just a little milk.” He murmurs.

John’s heart hammers, but he says nothing, afraid this anachronistic familiarity might be lost to him forever if he does. Sherlock rises abruptly and paces the room restlessly. John’s heart thrills, this is the man that he remembers, this is the feeling of being pulled inexorably into the orbit of Sherlock Holmes.

“I’ve observed all I can but I have insufficient data to work with. The only way forward is if I have better access to my subject; I need more data, John.” He says as though concluding a conversation he and John have been having.

“What experiment?” John asks bewildered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sherlock I haven’t been here for the last six months."

Sherlock turns his pale eyes on John and the doctor can’t help but hold his breath. He bears down on him, the movement across the room is lightening swift, and John doesn’t even have the time to tense his muscles before Sherlock looms over him, his breath a warm, moist ghost of sensation that causes the hairs on John’s face to stand on end.

“You.” He breaths softly, “You’re my experiment, Doctor Watson.” His eyes dart over the shorter man’s face. Rather than the detached calculation John endured I Switzerland, this look is desperate and personal. It feels, if possible, even more unsettling than the cold gaze Sherlock uses when observing and deducing because this is a look that holds implicit in it an invitation; there is room for John to respond, to open Sherlock up and return the scrutiny. John shivers. It’s almost too intimate after the long absence of Sherlock from his life. He wants to move away, but Sherlock’s gravitas holds him in place without so much as laying a finger on him.

“I need to know what purpose you served in my life, what power you held over me.” His low voice reverberates in Johns chest.

“I didn’t have _power over you_ , Sherlock, friendship isn’t like that.”

Sherlock shifts his weight from one foot to another, his arm brushing gently against John’s.

“But you do, John, you have some kind of power over me. I don’t even remember you properly and you make me cry and sometimes I can’t think straight I’m so possessed by these ghosts of our life together. There are so many thing on the tip of my tongue that I can’t get out, no matter how hard I try.” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair and finally pulls away from John to throw himself on his favourite armchair.

John’s face softens with emotion so rapidly that only Sherlock Holmes could’ve caught the transition.

John has desperately wanted to help his friend since he saw him locked in a tussle with Moriarty, but now he feels compelled to help the man in front of him, the man who can’t remember him and doesn’t understand why the few people in his life he thought he could trust are suddenly leaving him. John moves over to the armchair that used to be his favourite and sits down gingerly, half expecting Sherlock to ask him to leave once again. But he doesn’t. Instead he listens attentively while John talks until his throat is raw and his mouth dry. He tells Sherlock not only of their adventures together- the cases Sherlock solved and the tight corners John got them out of- but of the long periods of tedium between adventures and the quiet, comfortable familiarity they came to share, the jokes that no one else found funny.

Sherlock watches John’s animated face and the way he moves his hands; sure and slow. He’s charmed by the way this stranger tells stories, even if he finds it difficult to place himself amongst the action the way John does. The cadences of his speech flow over him and sometimes, while John lays out a scene before him, Sherlock can feel something stirring at the back of his mind in sympathy.

Once or twice he corrects John on a minor point of the story or criticises him for downplaying his deductions. Events drift into place, and match up to the disembodied emotions he’s been plagued by since his return form Switzerland. The world settles into place around him and he thinks he may have just enough data to draw preliminary conclusions regarding John Watson.

\--

It takes John longer to move back in to Baker Street than it took to move out. The delay is due in part to Sherlock hovering around him as he unpacks, delighting in making complicated deductions about John based on his belongings. They are almost entirely correct, but John can’t help but feel a little sad that his friend still talks about events he had a hand in as though they happened to someone else. He doesn’t mention it, best not to pressure him; their new friendship is still delicate. He wonders if this is how Sherlock always feels; waiting for the people around him to catch up to what is painfully obvious to him, forever making concessions, explaining. He wonders if Sherlock ever felt the same sort of dogged determination to wait patiently for him, because that’s the way he feels now about Sherlock. What did Sherlock see in him that made him so determined to wait?

“So have you figured it out yet?” John asks distractedly as he folds his jumpers and places them neatly in their draw.

Sherlock turns away form the shelf of books he’s been studying and gives John a long, scrutinising look, as though he might be able to pick up the thread of his thoughts with eyes alone.

“You said you needed more data on _Doctor Watson_ when I visited last month. Have you got enough yet?”

“Oh” Sherlock smiles “That, yes; I have quite enough data now, thank you.”

John looks at him expectantly. He is all long, pale limbs and quiet intensity. He’s looking less gaunt now that John has persuaded him to replace the barrage of drugs with a meal or two each day. Sherlock senses John’s eyes on him and meets his gaze.

John arches one eyebrow quizzically. “Well?” He queries, abandoning his jumpers, “What am I to you?”

He has Sherlock’s full attention now. He is surveying the doctor as if trying to gauge something. Finally he moves across the room to him. Unlike the previous month in the living room, his movements are slow nd deliberate. He stops inches away from John and places a pale hand on either side of his head holding him still while he bends slightly and presses their lips together gently. The kiss isn’t tentative so much as diligent. John has the impression that Sherlock is trying to imprint this sensation on his memory as fully as he can, to fasten it so that it won’t drift away. When he presses John’s lips open and traces his tongue carefully over each in turn, John can taste the oversweet tea they drank downstairs.

When Sherlock finally pulls away he fixes John with his pale gaze once more he looks almost nervous, like a teenager. John’s hart catches and the questions he was forming fall away.

Sherlock’s lips curve into a faint, ardent smile and he runs a single hand through John’s short hair.

“Listening to you last month I realised I was asking the wrong question.” Sherlock’s proximity and the unexpected kiss render John momentarily unable to form a coherent response, but Sherlock continues without one.

“Instead of asking what you are to me, I should have asked what I am to you.” He explains carefully, running his eyes over Johns face.

“And the answer to that is very simple” he breaths softly, bending for a second kiss. “I believe myself to be, John Watson, most sincerely _yours_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Whelp, I think this is as close to angst as I can write.
> 
> My google-fu tells me the nature of Sherlock’s injury is fairly unlikely- retrograde amnesia of a period of three years is stretching it, and it’s a little unclear how an unconscious Sherlock would have survived in the water even if we assume Moriarty took the brunt of the impact. We can only assume John’s quick-thinking and strategically brilliant mind had some hand in the latter, and the author’s tendency toward poetic symbolism in times of stress and Reichenbach angst account for the former.


End file.
